Thoughts on Hartline and Moore resigning with Dolphins

The Miami Dolphins are starting to make some moves this offseason, only they’re at the point where they can resign their own players. This morning we learned that the Dolphins resigned both Brian Hartline and Matt Moore to new contracts. Hartline’s deal is for 5 years and worth just under $31 million with $12.5 million guaranteed. Moore’s deal is said to be for 2 years and worth about $8 million. Bringing both players back helps to limit the number of holes that will need to be filled this offseason.

Photos courtesy of Dolphins.com

So where does this leave the Dolphins, who were once loaded with plenty of cap space? We don’t know. And honestly, no one really knows except the Dolphins because we have not seen the financial terms of both deals. At face value, Hartline’s deal looks like it’s worth $6 million per season. Moore’s deal looks like he’ll be paid $4 million per season. If that is in fact the cap numbers for each, the Dolphins would be left with about $28.6 million in cap room. We arrived at that number by taking the $47 mil the Dolphins had at the beginning of free agency and subtracted $8.4 mil for Randy Starks, $6 mil for Hartline and $4 mil for Moore. If we had to guess, the Dolphins will actually have more cap room than that.

Why? First, Randy Starks wants a longer term deal and the Dolphins don’t want to pay him $8.4 mil in 2013. If the two sides can come to an agreement on a 2-3 year deal, his cap number would almost certainly go down. We’ve seen speculation that Hartline’s deal would only cost about $4 mil against the cap, but that is unconfirmed. Moore’s deal could have playing time incentives in it, but again, we just don’t know. The point we’re trying to make is that the Dolphins will still have plenty of money to go after the Mike Wallace’s of the world once free agency starts. (cont’d on page 2, click here)